← The Late Show Pod Show with Stephen Colbert
The Late Show Pod Show with Stephen Colbert
Stephen Presents: Late Show Book Club | Daniel Kehlmann
00:16:57
Loading summary
Transcript55 lines
- [00:00]
Stephen Colbert
Know what they say when they reach for a snack? Don't hold back. And that's exactly the approach with Wonderful Pistachios. The don't hold back snack. These little wonders are so tasty, it feels like getting away with something. But surprise. Each serving has 6 grams of protein and 0 grams of regret. That's right. No guilt, just glory. Whether it's a satisfying crack of in shell pistachios or the smooth instant gratification of no shells, no judgment. Wonderful Pistachios has every snack style covered. Right now there's an obsession with jalapeno lime. It's spicy, it's zesty, it's basically a flavor roller coaster in a nut. Snacking on the go, grab a bag of no shells. Feeling contemplative and want to work for it a little. Crack open those in shell beauties. Either way, it's snacking like a champ. So the next time hunger strikes, don't hold back. Snack like you mean it with wonderful pistachios. Visit Wonderful Pistachios. Do come to learn more.
- [01:02]
Brett Podolski
Hey, I'm Brett Podolski, co founder of the Farmer's Dog. We make fresh food for dogs. We started the company when we saw what a huge difference it made in my own dog, Jada when she stopped eating ultra processed kibble and started eating fresh whole food. The Farmer's dog food isn't fancy. It's just real food delivered to your door in pre portioned packs. It's better for them and easier for you.
- [01:25]
Ali Jaffe Ramis
Get 50% off your first box at the farmersdog.com trial50. That's thefarmersdog.com trial50.
- [01:38]
Stephen Colbert
Hi, Becca.
- [01:39]
Ali Jaffe Ramis
Hi Stephen.
- [01:39]
Stephen Colbert
And hello audience. This is Stephen Colbert with the Late Show Pod Show.
- [01:42]
Ali Jaffe Ramis
Thanks for listening to the Pod Show. We got something special for you today. We have the book club, the Late Show Book Club.
- [01:48]
Stephen Colbert
Oh fantastic.
- [01:48]
Ali Jaffe Ramis
We have the latest interview with the August book pick. This is Daniel Kelman with the Director, his novel the Director. It's historical fiction. And the voice that you're gonna hear in this lovely interview is Alli Jaffe Ramis. And you wanna tell people about the Late Show Book Club, how it came.
- [02:05]
Stephen Colbert
To be a Late Show Book club? Well, I mean came to be because Ally said, why don't we have a book club? I think that's how it came about.
- [02:11]
Ali Jaffe Ramis
Yes.
- [02:11]
Stephen Colbert
And I said, sure, that sounds great. Does that involve more work from me? And she goes, it does. And I go, I love it. Go for it, girl.
- [02:18]
Ali Jaffe Ramis
Yeah. Ali's the most lovely person.
- [02:20]
Promotional Voice
She is.
- [02:20]
Ali Jaffe Ramis
She's wonderful. She loves to read, has great book recs all the time and every month.
- [02:25]
Stephen Colbert
Always bragging, I know how to read.
- [02:27]
Ali Jaffe Ramis
Yeah, I know literacy. But she's great. And you're gonna hear her voice. She's a second producer on the show.
- [02:33]
Stephen Colbert
Meaning she is one of the producers who basically preps me for the guest and the guest for me when they come on.
- [02:39]
Ali Jaffe Ramis
Well, this is the Late Show Book Club with Ali and Daniel Kelman. Please enjoy.
- [02:43]
Stephen Colbert
Engage.
- [02:49]
Interviewer
Daniel, we're so glad to have you here. This is your seventh book. Your last novel was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, but you're here today for your newest book, the Director. How would you describe it in one sentence?
- [03:02]
Daniel Kelman
In one sentence. It's a historical novel about a man who is a very famous director. He flees the Nazi dictatorship, goes to Hollywood and then for complicated reason, goes back back and makes films for Goebbels and for the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda without being a Nazi himself. So it's a story of moral compromise and about everyday life in the Third Reich.
- [03:32]
Interviewer
It's a work of historical fiction, a genre you've explored in several of your books. How do you balance blending fact and fiction when you are writing about real people and events?
- [03:43]
Daniel Kelman
I think what you have to do when you write this kind of novel is you have to do what journalists are not allowed to do and historians are not allowed to do, which is you have an idea of what it probably was like, what probably happened, what it probably felt like, what people. Yeah. What you're pretty sure people did. And then you invent that story and you can't invent something that you feel could not have happened. But also if you completely stick to the facts, to the known facts, then you're not writing a novel. So you have to explore that, I would say, vague realm of possibility of what could have happened, but also what you are pretty much sure would have made sense.
- [04:32]
Interviewer
Your father grew up in Europe during that time. What was his experience during World War II?
- [04:38]
Daniel Kelman
My father was born in 1927, so he was a teenager at the peak of the Nazi period in Austria, where him and his parents lived. And they were a Jewish family. And my grandfather had some documents forged in a clever way and had his wife declared as half Jewish by claiming and paying witnesses for it that she was the illegitimate daughter of the caretaker of the house of her parents. So it's kind of a crazy story that would be a different novel in itself, but they were a half Jewish family in the terms of the times, and they were always threatened. My grandfather Lost his job. My father was in a concentration camp towards the end of the year, towards the end of the war, for. In the last year of the war, for three months. So he. But. But he gave me lots of stories of what everyday life was like in the Third Reich and what it was like to attend school and what it was like to have real fascist Nazi teachers, like party member Nazi teachers and all that. What the neighbors behaved like, the way you couldn't talk because you had to remember that the neighbors could hear you and all these things. And I was able to draw on those stories of what everyday life was like, of what it really felt like. And that was extremely helpful and, of course, also felt good to me to use all these things that my father had to suffer through in a way that I hope would have. He would have liked, too.
- [06:35]
Interviewer
This is a book about moral compromise. Did writing this book change the way you think about complicity?
- [06:43]
Daniel Kelman
It did a little bit. It did. It made it clear to me that complicity, if you are living in a dictatorship or in a country that's transforming into dictatorship, what. The complicity is such a big word. What it is for most people most of the time is just everyday life. And a dictatorship transforms your everyday life in a way that every. That complicity is happening all the time. I mean, all the time you're not saying something you want to say because somebody could hear you, and you're not sure where people are who are talking to in their loyalties or their opinions. That is already complicity. But on the other hand, you have to adapt to where you are, to your surroundings, to the political insanity you're living in to a certain extent. So it's a very complicated gray zone. But on the other hand, that doesn't mean that you should just say, oh, I wasn't. I mean, I was lucky. I wasn't born back then. And who knows what I would have done? That's always kind of already. Like you're already throwing up your hands and are saying, everything's kind of fine, because I probably would have done the same. What you should say is, I hope I would have done the right thing. And when you see the world around you transform into a dictatorship, which we see in some countries right now, is you should still remember that it's very important that you do the right thing every day.
- [08:31]
Interviewer
One of the most unsettling consequences of Pabst Choices is reflected in the person his son grows up to be.
- [08:38]
Daniel Kelman
Yes. Yeah.
- [08:39]
Interviewer
Why did you want to emphasize the impact on his son?
- [08:45]
Daniel Kelman
Because that is his biggest moral failing, in my feeling, in my sense, his biggest moral failing is that he goes back. Yes, he goes back. That's definitely a mistake. He lets himself be pressured and coaxed into making films and he tries to make good films with the means the Nazis give him. And he actually succeeds to a certain degree. And that's all bad, but it's complicated. But what's not complicated is his son is a free, gifted, intelligent kid who goes to a school in Los Angeles, in Hollywood, and then he sends him to a boarding school in Nazi Germany, subjected to the full pressure of the system. And no 14 year old can sustain a healthy soul and life of the mind under this pressure. And it breaks his son and it breaks him in the way that he becomes a perpetrator himself, he becomes a bully, because that's what the system encourages, the Nazi school system. He becomes somebody who completely identifies with the system. And you really cannot blame him. You have to blame his father who brought him back and then sends him to the boarding school. So I felt like the best way to think about what the totalitarian state does is to write about what it does to children because they cannot escape the forces that destroy their souls in those systems.
- [10:32]
Interviewer
The director in this book is driven by an urge to make art that he feels is important and necessary in the world. What power do you believe a work of art can have in the world?
- [10:45]
Daniel Kelman
I think it's different for different kinds of art. What I can, I feel, can speak about is the power of novel writing and novel reading. And that's novels are. If they're well written and if they're good novels, they're schools of empathy in a way. You learn to think and to feel as someone else. Even movies cannot really do that. If you watch a movie, even if it's, if it's. If it's a great movie, you look at other people from outside. You look at them as, yeah, people who are not you. But if you read a book, you are other people in a way. While you're reading it, you think with their head, you feel their feelings, or that's what a novel does, if it really works for you. And. And so it's a school of empathy, it's a school of understanding other people to a deep emotional level. And so you become a more empathetic human being by reading novels. That's something I deeply believe in.
- [11:49]
Interviewer
So you're saying that art is still a worthy pursuit in times of turmoil and tyranny?
- [11:55]
Daniel Kelman
I think it's more necessary than ever. It's also the place where true resistance can live. I mean, art will always find a way to speak free and speak in a free and truthful way about the pressures and the political insanity we live in. And if we can't do that anymore, then the only thing we have to do is to leave and to try to get out of there. The freedom of art is kind of the ultimate border we have to defend. And if we lose that, then all we have to do is to save our lives and run away.
- [12:44]
Interviewer
You wrote this book in German and then it was translated to English by award winning translator Ross Benjamin. What is that collaboration like for you as the author?
- [12:55]
Daniel Kelman
It's wonderful and interesting for me. Ross is a great translator. He translated Franz Kafka and, and was showered with awards for that, rightfully. And he translated Hulderlein, which is one of the hardest German writers to read, even in the original. So I don't know how he did that. So his knowledge of German is absolutely perfect. But when he's working on one of my books, and this is the third book we've published together in English, we are constantly in touch and constantly sending emails back and forth. He has lots of questions which I love and encourage and I make it a priority to answer. So whatever I'm doing, if I see there's an email from Ross with a translation question, I'm firing off an answer on my phone right away, really fast if I can. Sometimes I have to look something up, but I'm trying to make it an absolute priority to always answer. And, and it's. And then of course I read what he comes up with and I read it closely and very rarely I have a question when I'm like, can we. Do you think there's another way to say this a little bit better? And I make a suggestion and then when. And that happens sometimes when he says, yeah, okay, I think you're right. This is a great day for me because of course, obviously his English is so much better than mine. And that's always a day when I feel like very good about my, my English. But it rarely happens because usually when Ross has a solution, it's the right solution.
- [14:34]
Interviewer
If you knew you were going to be stuck in a foreign country for a few months and let's just say you have no access to books while you're there, but you can bring one book, what book would you bring?
- [14:46]
Daniel Kelman
That's an easy one. It would always be War and Peace by Tolstoy. It's my all time favorite novel and it's a novel that you can never get to the bottom of. There's always something else and it's so wonderful. And of course, knowing where I am, I would also say if for whatever reason they say any other book than War and Peace, I would say Lord of the Rings.
- [15:11]
Interviewer
Good answer. Do you have a piece of advice you give to aspiring writers?
- [15:16]
Daniel Kelman
Yes, it's a very simple advice. It's write a lot, write a lot, don't publish a lot, but just write all the time. Put in the hours, just write and accept that most of what you're writing is terrible. And that does not necessarily change. Even when you've published 10 books, you still have to have the courage to be at home and write. And it's terrible, but no one has to see it. But by writing something that doesn't quite work, you move yourself into the zone where it will start to. Everything will start to come into place and you feel like now I'm getting somewhere and then it will get better. But don't be discouraged when you feel I'm writing, but it's not great. Yeah, that's just everyday life of the writer. But you need to put in the hours. And also you can only edit something. You can only make something better. You can only polish something if you've written it before. And that sounds very banal, but the important thing is to actually put words on paper or the screen or whatever device you use. But put down words.
- [16:34]
Interviewer
That is great advice. Thanks for being here. Daniel the Director is available everywhere. Books are sold. For Late show book club updates, follow our Instagram olberellateshow.
- [16:47]
Stephen Colbert
Thank you for listening to the Late Show Pod show with Stephen Colbert. Just one more thing. If you want to see more of me, come to The Late Show YouTube channel for more clips and exclusives.
- [17:00]
Promotional Voice
September 4th on Paramount.
- [17:03]
Someone is trying to frame us until.
- [17:05]
Daniel Kelman
Our names are cleared we're fugitives from.
- [17:08]
Promotional Voice
Intervals and Clyde with better snacks.
- [17:12]
Espionage, you still as good a shot as you used to be? Better is there love language?
- [17:18]
We like to walk that fine line between techno thriller and romantic comedy. We make up our own rules.
- [17:25]
NCIS Tony and Ziva streaming September 4th on Paramount Plus September 4th on Paramount Plus.
- [17:32]
Someone is trying to frame us until.
- [17:34]
Daniel Kelman
Our names are cleared we're fugitives from.
- [17:37]
Promotional Voice
Interval Like Bonnie and Clyde with better snacks.
- [17:40]
NCIS Ton and Ziva streaming September 4th on Paramount Plus.